Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!pcg
From: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Software Maintenance for the UNIX Operating System
Keywords: unix maintenance amek spms rcs sccs ipse
Message-ID: <379@aber-cs.UUCP>
Date: 12 Dec 88 15:56:54 GMT
References: <21896@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Distribution: eunet,world
Organization: CS Dept., University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK
	(Disclaimer: my statements are purely personal)
Lines: 29

In article <21896@apple.Apple.COM> earlw@apple.com (Earl Wallace) writes:

    I'm looking for final solution in maintaining UNIX source code.  I know
    about SCCS, RCS, Make and NewMake, but I was wondering if there is
    something out there that goes beyond these programs.

On some BSD contrib tape you can find SPMS. I does maintain, for each
directory, an index to things, and can link together makefiles, rcs/sccs files,
in several distinct directories, organized in projects/subprojects, quite
smoothly. I use it to maintain the Ingres source, which is even larger than
that for Unix and the basic commands.

SPMS has a few defects, it is tedious and somewhat inflexible (it insists
that you have a distinct directory for each executable/library you want to
build), but overall it is quite nice and commendable. It hasn't caught on
very much, probably because of a lack of sensibility to issues of big
projects in the Unix world>

    Maybe a database-driven software maintenance system that keeps all module
    information in the database and allows you to build any release of your
    UNIX software at anytime.

Here I can only observe that if you want an IPSE, you had better consider
carefully which one you want. Get some information, compare them, try them
out before committing to a specific one.
-- 
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi			INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk
Sw.Eng. Group, Dept. of Computer Science	UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
UCW, Penglais, Aberystwyth, WALES SY23 3BZ (UK)